Review: Feenix Nascita

Up for review today is the 2014 edition of the Nascita mouse, made by Feenix. If you?re wondering who Feenix is, from the horse?s mouth of their PR, they bill themselves as a boutique peripheral firm for luxury gaming instruments. Still confused? So was I, until our company met with them at CES2014.

Their visual aesthetic stems from a design decision to strive for simplicity and elegance and still deliver the best possible gaming experience while fitting in fashionably in any home or office. This has lent itself well to the major differentiator behind the Nascita?s design: promising to be completely driver-less.

Moving on, the Nascita comes packaged in a very plain white box that exudes an Apple-white sort of feeling that uses as little branding and lettering as possible in their minimalist inlaid style.

On the front face of the box is the Feenix logo.

On one side of the box the word ?nascita?

And on the back is the copyright information and mandatory declarations

After sliding off the lid of the box and lifting away a sheet of protective foam you?ll find the mouse itself.

Underneath the mouse and packaging, the only other contents of the package are a bag with spare teflon feet and a minimalist card detailing the Nascita?s redesign, contact information, and the device?s serial number.

The specifications for the mouse are as follows:

8200 dpi Avago 9800 laser chipset

Avago lens

1 ms response time / 1000Hz Ultrapolling

12000 fps

150 ips

30g acceleration

114g net weight

The Nascita delivers a sort of je ne sais quoi that brings together their minimalist design philosophy without being overbearing. The mouse immediately sets itself apart from the pack by featuring white LEDs, creating a somewhat amusing headlight effect for the two decorative lights embedded at the front of the mouse. Utilizing more of these white LEDs, the display screen showing the current DPI setting and the name of the mouse are lit up along the left hand ridge next to the left click button.

In tune with their subtle elegance philosophy, a single instance of the Feenix bird logo is featured once in the palm swell of the mouse in lieu of any further branding on the top side.

On the bottom, the name of the mouse and maker?s marks are silk screened onto the bottom surface between the teflon feet and around the sensor.

The button arrangement on the unit is fairly standard, with a total of seven clickable buttons and a scroll wheel. The clickable buttons include the two main switches, the two DPI switches, the two thumb accessible buttons on the left side, and the clickable scroll wheel. What the mouse does not have is a left and right scroll capability.

Plugging it in straight out of the box on a fresh boot turns on all LEDs and starts you off at 1600 DPI. The DPI can be adjusted at any time using the two grey switches positioned below the mouse wheel. The DPI options are 800, 1200, 1600, 2400, 3200, 4800, 6400, and 8200 with one setting per click and no response to holding down the switch.

The mouse feels great in hand, the size swelling to fill the entire palm yet remaining out of the way if a claw grip is more your style. The proprietary anti-slip and anti-sweat coating gives the unit a soft yet ?grippy? surface, improving handling. Button placement is also optimal, with the DPI switches arranged in such a way that there is no way to accidentally hit them in the course of use. This statement is also true of the two thumb accessible switches, giving intuitive button options without cluttering the interface.

In motion, the mouse moves very well, delivering the promised slick glide and accurate motion across a number of surfaces, including the Feenix Dimora pad which is meant to be paired with this mouse. Being an FPS player, I gave the mouse some road miles across Team Fortress 2, ARMA 3, and Left4Dead 2 on top of general day to day usage and found it to be a great performer at any level of sensitivity. Whether you need to do some twitch sniping, low and slow accurate pulling, or simply need to be able to select accurately out of a menu under pressure, the mouse performs quite well.

This is definitely not a mouse for MMO players or anyone looking to bind every macro sequence they can onto their mouse. Personally, my gaming habits have never needed nor used the mouse for anything beyond the standard 2 click and scroll options with the occasional extra keys bound for quick thumb access. The mouse retails for $97USD on Feenix?s site and as of the writing of this article, they actively avoid having any other distributors as part of their particularly judicious marketing strategies.

Admittedly, this places the mouse at the top end of the pricing and availability scale. Whether or not the price tag is worth it is very much dependent on the particular needs of the customer. If the price isn?t right, there are plenty of other more economical designs with the same features (or lack thereof) or simply more options on the software end of things.

The only thing this mouse promises to deliver is an excellent user experience without any of the normal hindrances of bulky control software or the normal gaudiness of much more common Taiwanese designs. This mous e delivers directly into that exact niche, and does it with a streamlined and understated elegance that leaves you wondering about what else this company is capable of.

While this mouse may not be the flashiest or most featured of the pack, it has managed to wrest the Editor?s Choice Prosumer award from our hands, for that particular gestalt of their design and the je ne sais quois of the user experience that brings everything together.